Posts tagged with "MOCA":

Street artist Blu recently made LA headlines when his commissioned mural for MOCA's Geffen Contemporary (featuring coffins draped by dollar bills) was subsequently whitewashed by MOCA itself. In a statement, MOCA called the mural, which was across from the LA Veterans' Affairs Hospital, "inappropriate," and the move has angered (to say the least) the street art community.
For those of you unfamiliar with Blu, please take a look at this video, called Big Bang Big Boom. There are no special effects, just stop-action animation; a dazzling combination of architecture and art. It's unclear where he shot this piece, but he obviously needed to find an area with lots of empty, and largely abandoned, walls and lots. We're blown away, so to speak.

Now that downtown LA has tossed its hat into the ring to compete for Eli Broad's new contemporary art museum, we've finally reached Broad saturation. Broad has gotten the cities of Santa Monica, Culver City, and Beverly Hills to also compete for the museum, assuring that he gets the sweetest of sweetheart deals. Meanwhile, he basically controls most of the major public architecture and art in the city. There's now the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in Miracle Mile, the Broad Art Center at UCLA, as well as MOCA (bailed out and greatly influenced by Broad), the LA High School For the Performing Arts (largely funded by Broad), Disney Hall (pushed and funded by Broad), and the Grand Avenue Project (also largely supported by Broad). Phew. It's great to have a guiding hand and all, but GEEZ! Ok, we promise not to mention the name Broad again. Until at least tomorrow...

UPDATE: A source close to the museum writes in with this: "Who knows what Deitch will do? It probably depends on what Eli Broad tells him to do." Which is pretty much what you might have guessed reading the (New York) Times' story on the whole affair on the Arts front today. Looking for hints in Tyler Green's first-out-the-gate interview with Deitch, we found none. Design was mentioned exactly once, in reference to a MOCA satellite at the Pacific Design Center. And yet Deitch's shows and showiness have a certain architectural scale about them. As always, anything goes and anything can happen.
New York uber-collector and bombastic bon vivant Jefferey Deitch has been named director of LA's Museum of Contemporary Art. Deitch, a gallerist of late among many other things, has had a storied career, but he becomes about the only art dealer/gallery owner to assume leadership of a major U.S. museum. There has already been much talk about that sacred cow The Art World and What It All Means. But what most concerns us is that, while he is known for developing riské artists and outré installations—Swoon sailing the Hudson was a recent favorite—Deitch has little, or at least less, concern for design than some of his fellow gallerists. This may not bode well for the hope of re-establishing the museum's recently-gutted architecture department. (Brooke Hodge, curator of architecture was removed last May, and the museum cancelled its blockbuster Morphosis show as well). Granted if Deitch is anything he is unconventional and unexpected, so who knows what could happen. Which is why LA's gain is New York's loss, as with the deal comes the closure of one of the most exciting galleries in the country.

We knew Rem Koolhaas had a crush on Miuccia Prada, but now Frank Gehry and her have teamed up, and it's not for a new "epicenter." As The New Yorker details in a Talk piece this week, the Santa Monica architect was asked by his artist friend Francesco Vezzoli to design a hat for none other than walking art piece Lady Gaga, and the hat, along with her dress, were made by Prada for a benefit at LA's Museum of Contemporary Art last month. As Dana Goodyear describes it, "Gaga wore the Gehry hat all folded in on itself, a millinery version of Walt Disney Hall." But this being The New Yorker, there were no pictures, only a drawing, so we had to see the hat for ourselves, which, thanks to Gaga Daily, we found it.
But the real treat is hearing Gehry describe his pièce de résistance:

Gehry said that he had done the initial drawing on his iPhone, which an assistant then produced: a violet scribble with a black-and-blue iris at the center. “Since I’ve never designed a hat before, I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to walk,” he said. “I did have an idea that involved people with sticks holding it up, walking behind her. I didn’t know how far I could go with this thing.”

The board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) today made a formal proposal to merge with the financially struggling Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). According to a press release (top portion, above) issued today by LACMA, the goal of the move would be to to "preserve the independence and integrity of both institutions while combining their operations and infrastructure." To save money MOCA has already shut down its Geffen Contemporary for six months, and is said to be pondering the sale of some of its artworks.

According to the release if a merger were to occur MOCA's collections would not only be exhibited at LACMA's Grand Avenue location and at the Geffen, but also at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), and at LACMA's planned Stewart Resnick Pavilion. LACMA's $68.2 million budget is more than three times that of MOCA's $20 million. According to the L.A. Times, MOCA's trustees met today to discus proposals, including a $30-million bailout offer from Eli Broad. According to Curbed LA, LA City Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilwoman Jan Perry introduced a motion to allocate $2.8 million in Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) funds to the struggling MOCA, provided the museum adheres to its stipulations. Stay tuned....